Internally here at C5 Insight, our Exchange moved from local to Office 365.  While overall it’s been great, I had one really annoying issue.  I have a lot of blogs I subscribe to, and they all stopped working immediately after moving to Exchange online in Office 365.  Boo!  You could hit refresh, and just no new items.  What gives?  While I can’t say WHY it broke, I can only offer you a solution after searching the internet came up empty.  I know I know, I’m a SharePoint guy and this is for Outlook.  I just hope to save someone else the pain I have suffered! 

The Problem

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, this issue deals with the RSS feeds feature in Outlook.  No new items :(

You try to just right click on RSS Feeds and add a new feed, and we get this lovely error “The attempted operation failed.  An object could not be found”:

What?  Huh?  I used to be able to add this same feed URL, what gives?  To look at this a little further, you click File –> Account Settings –> Account Settings.  The RSS feeds tab is where want to be.  Just because you have a folder in RSS feeds (or don’t), doesn’t mean you have an actual feed source.  This is where the raw feeds are listed, and the folder where the feeds are delivered.  All of them will have a Last Update on “<pending>”.

Awesome.  At first I just tried to click change, and point it to the right folder, but that didn’t help.  Now to get an error that shows the ACTUAL problem, click New, and paste your feed URL here and click Add.  Finally we’re getting somewhere! 

The Fix

How do I fix Outlook?  You DON’T have to delete the feed folder to fix this, and if you do, you will lose any old posts that aren’t in the current feed.  To fix it, all we have to do is remove the raw feed from the RSS feeds tab, then add it back.  If you don’t remember what the feed URL is, you can see it by highlighting the feed and click Change. 

To fix it, perform the following:

1. In the RSS feeds tab, find your old bad feed URL you are trying to delete in the list, and click Remove. 
2. Click New, and paste your feed in the feed URL box, and click Add. 
3. To get the fixed new feeds and maintain all of the old feeds in the same folder, click Change folder under Delivery location.  Browse to the existing old folder location that has all the old posts in it:
   
   
   
4. Click Ok twice, and you’re back at the RSS feeds tab.  After a few seconds, you should notice feeds coming in the feeds folder, and the Last Update should be updated (you have to close and re-open the RSS feeds tab to see the update). 

You’re good to go!  Now repeat times the number of feeds you have (if you’re me, it will take awhile).  But at least you have working feeds! 

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